Neva 2 Young 2 Lead

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I went to a conference hosted in Johburg for Round Square which is an organization “dedicated to empowering the youth.” The theme was Neva 2 Young 2 Lead, silly name amazing concept. I learned so much and had an amazing time meeting people from Ghana, Kenya, India, Australia and more South Africans.

The conference was 3 days long and I don’t want to go into all the boring details, so here are a few highlights:

•Aloysias Maimane (keynote speaker): My favorite part of his speech is where he talked about how one wants to have a legacy. You don’t want your funeral speech to be “he lies so and so, he lived and…. Had a Volvo.” His speech was not filled with demands on how one must better themself, but rather hypothetical questions meant for personal reflection which I really enjoyed.
•A scavenger hunt is very revealing about people. Who’s lazy, who’s competitive, and who’s unfit? One night all the groups competed against one another searching all over the school for their clues. Surprise: I am more competitive than I thought I am and running into huge metal chains hurt! Our group would have been second, but someone left a couple clues behind 😞
•In one workshop we instructed a boy to look down, pick up a marker and write is name on the board… without talking or getting out of our chair. We only instructed him by clapping and booing. With a lot of encouragement he completed the tasks. Why did he respond to our claps and boos? Because he wanted to please us. Don’t we all respond in some way to others opinions? I know I do, and I am usually not happy after I change myself. I loved the illustration of how we change our course of action to please society.

I cannot write all the activities and opportunities I experienced at this conference. It was amazing.

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Photos

Neva 2 Young 2 Lead
Joanne and Jenny chilling in the sun

Neva 2 Young 2 Lead
St. Stithian's campus was huge and well huge. 4/5 pools, too many tennis courts to count, 2 rugby feilds and more....

Neva 2 Young 2 Lead
The wheels on the bus go round and round :)

Neva 2 Young 2 Lead
Elzbeth knows how to work my camera better than I do...

Neva 2 Young 2 Lead
Discrimination = bad

Neva 2 Young 2 Lead
Yay walking on the highway... our bus broke down on our way to the township, so we had to walk to the other bus.

Neva 2 Young 2 Lead
No surprise that my job was to play with the kids at Soweto.

Comments

[Donny]

The world is a better place with you in it as a leader
We are in good hands with young people of your caliber ready to take the lead!